


Gonna Take a Lot

by DeathByJumpingFrenchman



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Africa by Toto, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Just two bros, M/M, Make Up, Satan don't @ me, Swearing, a lil bit of - Freeform, at the end, no pennywise, not in /my/ house, richie plays guitar, sorta - Freeform, this is rlly gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 16:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13528611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathByJumpingFrenchman/pseuds/DeathByJumpingFrenchman
Summary: They stood there for the duration of the song, let the chorus sit between them, and suddenly, finally, Eddie was smiling, was thinking that maybe everything would be okay, maybe he wasn't delicate or sick, he was loved and good and most of all, most importantly, he was Richie's.But then, when everything came crashing down, Eddie almost felt like he knew it was coming.•Or, Richie makes a mistake, a misunderstanding arises, and Eddie really, really hates Toto's Africa.





	Gonna Take a Lot

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all! This came from a prompt on tumblr and it's honestly a bit confusing, but it has a couple of gay dorks, so maybe you'll let me off the hook? This fic goes out to Toto, may they never know that their most popular song is now the anthem of a fandom based around a child-eating space clown.

“ _I_ _hear_ _the_ _drums_ _echoing_ _tonight_ ”

  
Eddie groaned as the familiar notes began to drift through his headphones, strangely out of sync with the beat created underfoot by the crunching of leaves. His hands, which were buried deep in his pockets in an attempt to block out the cold, struggled to free themselves from the thin wool gloves Eddie had pulled on the moment he had left his dorm room. Quickly, he pressed the skip button.

  
“Stupid,” he muttered, angry more than anything. The song used to be one of his favorites, as cheesy as it was, but now it twisted up his stomach into so many knots he felt he could barely stand straight, filled him with a quaking, simmering sort of anger. Even the opening chords of his once-favorite song were enough to put him in a bad mood, and by the time he reached his first class, Eddie was scowling at everything from the stupid scrape of chairs on the floor to the stupid way the skin on the back of his hands was dry. It was safe to say that that day’s lecture had consisted of little things Eddie found to release his anger onto, the ripping of the corners of his notebook paper, the way he pressed his hands into his temples with just a bit too much force, and that Eddie hardly took in a word. This, if anything, made Eddie even angrier. The class was on international relations, an introductory course, but interesting nonetheless, and the fact that he hadn’t learned a single thing was mostly Richie’s fault.

  
No, Eddie thought immediately. That name had to be censored even within Eddie’s mind, ( _activity spaces vary by age, and the extent of people’s mental maps depends on their ages. Mental maps include **terra incognita** , unknown lands that are off limits_)-

  
“ _But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation_ ”

  
The girl next to Eddie was humming under her breath, jolting Eddie from his self pity. Her hair was short and curling around her ears, red and vibrant. Her name was Beverly, and Eddie considered her a possible friend. Their tentative smiles had turned into conversations when Eddie had told Bev to go home just last week. She had stumbled into the class with swollen eyes and curls that were messier than usual, and Eddie had all but pushed her out the door with promises on his lips to take extra-detailed notes and send them to her over the weekend.

  
They had been growing closer ever since, and Eddie genuinely enjoyed everything about her company. He knew that if he wasn’t gay (and with whispers in the back of his head of sick and dirty, sometimes he wished he wasn’t) she would be exactly the kind of girl he would fall in love with. Now though, Eddie felt within him fire rising up.

  
“ _She’s coming in 12:30 flight_ ” Bev’s voice was soft, so soft Eddie was likely the only one to hear it.

  
“Can you stop singing that?” Eddie whispered, his voice tight. Bev ducked her head and mumbled a ‘sorry’ under her breath, though her face was stony. Eddie felt bad immediately. The rest of the period was spent not only feeling like shit, but feeling like guilty shit.

  
After the class blessedly came to an end, Eddie caught up to Bev, who was walking away out the door.

  
“Bev!” She slowed her pace, but Eddie still had to nearly jog to catch up to her long strides.

  
“Hiya, Eddie.” Thankfully, she didn’t seem too upset.

  
“I’m really sorry for snapping in class today,” Eddie brought a hand up to push a curl behind his ear. “You have a really pretty voice.”

  
“Don’t worry about it,” Bev said, her smile righting itself and returning to its full brightness. “My roommate’s been learning Africa on his guitar, so it’s permanently stuck up here,” she knocked her hand against her head. Eddie laughed, relieved.

  
“Yeah,” Eddie said, “Great song.”

  
And it was, or truly would be, if Eddie hadn’t royally fucked up to it. But really, he had loved the song.

  
Without his consent, he was back in that moment, back in-- _his dorm kitchen, a record playing even though his phone was sitting on the counter, swaying between Richie’s legs, the boy himself seated up on the table, his hands lazily draped across Eddie’s shoulders. The boys were wearing easy smiles, and God, how Eddie would give anything to stop reliving this. The song, he knew, had turned with the whirring of the needle to a familiar melody, and Richie had pulled him close. At the action, Eddie’s heart had sat sunken into his chest, so full to the brim he thought love might have overflowed. Maybe it was here he had made his mistake, but Richie had wrapped his arms around Eddie and his legs around his calves, had nestled his face in Eddie’s hair, has stroked circles along Eddie’s back as if he had never wanted to let go, and Eddie’s mouth had opened before he could stop it_ \--Bev’s hand in front of his face stopped the scene, screeched across the memory, disturbing it like a record scratch, and for this he was so grateful he thought he might cry.

  
“You alright there?” She asked, her voice soft again. Eddie shook himself.

  
“Yeah,” his voice quivered, betraying him. “Yeah sorry, guess I’m just tired.”

  
Tired of Richie’s bullshit, maybe.

  
The two walked in silence for a bit, but at a glance, Eddie could see there was something nagging Bev in the way her teeth were snagging the corners of her lips.

  
“What’s up?” he ventured, grateful their dorms seemed to be in the same direction as they exited the building and started up the leaf-strewn path.

  
“It’s just,” Bev started, her cadence jolted. She let out a sigh, as if convincing herself to continue. “Do you wanna come over?” Eddie’s brow furrowed, but he smiled nonetheless.

  
“Uh, sure?” Eddie still felt bad about snapping in class, and besides, he had an hour until his next class, and his therapist had been telling him to take more risks. If this could help get him out of his own head, what did he have to lose refusing?

  
They walked in a comfortable silence. Over the course of the class the air had become slightly more pleasant, and was now permeable without gloves. There was russling coming from a cluster of birds up in a tree ahead, and Eddie made a mental note to tell Stan about this particular part of the campus--

  
“ _The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me to salvation.”_

_  
“I love you.” Richie’s fingers stilled against his back, and Eddie tensed up, fearful. His heart was beating so fast it brought moisture to his eyes that he desperately forced away. Slowly, thankfully, Richie began to move again, bent his head to press a gentle kiss against Eddie’s forehead. They stood there for the duration of the song, let the chorus sit between them, and suddenly, finally, Eddie was smiling, was thinking that maybe everything would be okay, maybe he wasn’t delicate or sick, he was loved and good and most of all, most importantly, he was Richie’s._

_  
But then, when everything came crashing down, Eddie almost felt like he knew it was coming._

__  
Richie had slipped out from around Eddie as soon as the needle went back to pulling silence from the record, and he was out the door before Eddie could call out to him, beg him to stay, and Eddie was crying because this time, it actually was his fault. He had fucked up, this wasn’t something he could blame on his mother or on Henry Bowers and walk away from, this was completely him. It was his fault he had spoken, his fault he had gotten his own hopes up, his own damn fault that no one would ever want him like that, to hold as more than a friend or to fuck as more than an occasional hookup--  
Eddie hadn’t heard from Richie since. It had been three days, and while at first he had been inclined to blame himself, he knew, at least, that Richie was being a complete and utter dick.

  
“Here we are!” chirped Bev’s voice, once again startling Eddie from his trance. He looked around at the dorm hallway, nearly identical to his own, (though something about it seemed familiar) and he regretted in the back of his mind spacing out during the walk there. She seemed slightly off as they walked up to the door of her dorm, but Eddie paid it no mind. Before he knew what was happening, the door was swinging open, and he was hit with those sickening, sickening chords once again, and just as he was about to turn around, walk away or maybe snap at Bev, he caught sight of what was in front of him.

  
“Sorry Eddie,” Bev said as Eddie’s eyes latched onto the figure in front of him, whose eyes were blown wide and who looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “He’s been driving me crazy. There’s only so many times someone can describe ‘their Eds’ in great depth before a gall goes insane.”

  
There, sitting on the dorm bed that was far too small for his sprawling stature, was Richie Tozier, his mouth hanging open dumbly, a guitar perched on his lap, and something glinting (almost like tears) in his eyes.

  
“Eddie,” Richie breathed. Eddie felt his throat close up, felt the rage and the heartbreak clogging there.

  
“I’ll leave the two of you to it,” Bev said, though Eddie could barely hear her. There was a ringing in his ears, one that muted the closing of the door and the chatter from outside. _All he could think was, here, look, here’s the boy who lead you on, here’s the boy who doesn’t love you, look, here’s your mistake_.

  
“I’m leaving,” Eddie announced finally, after a minute of staring. His voice was quiet, quivering, it was a strange combination of angry and broken, and Richie recoiled at the use of it as if it had hurt him.

  
“No, Eds, Eddie, hold up,” Richie swung the guitar over his side awkwardly so he could reach his hand out desperately and latch onto Eddie’s retreating wrist. “Let me explain, please.”

  
Eddie let the rage simmer up, let it consume him because God, anything was better than the empty acceptance.

  
“What?” he snapped, pulling his hand away and spinning to face Richie, his face pulled up into a mocking sneer. “Explain how you fucking walked out on me and ignored me for half a fucking week?” Eddie stepped closer, his voice raising in decibels, the anger churning into something that made him feel powerful. “Explain how you don’t fucking love me back, how much of a dick move that was?” Richie opened his mouth, but Eddie wasn’t done. “What, lemme guess, you wanna explain how fucking unloveable I am? God Rich, I thought you were at least my friend, do you want to explain how I’m not even that to you anymore?”

  
The silence sat between them in a way similar to music, only this time, instead of soft promise, there was dead space. Eddie could see sickness in this silence, he thought. Maybe if he looked close enough, he could see a corpse too, that of what he and Richie could have been, Eddie’s love covered in maggots and swarming with flies-

  
And then it was gone.

  
Richie was looking down, down at his guitar, down to where the silence had been cut off from. He was strumming the chords to the song that had been following Eddie from the moment he woke up, and Eddie knew he should leave, knew he needed to leave, but his feet were rooted to the ground. A small part of him, the part of him that was growing larger, the part of him that knew it wasn’t really Richie’s fault his love was unrequited, the part of him that knew he was angry at the universe more than he was at Richie, paused, entranced. Even when he was being a dick, Richie still looked so beautiful, his curls falling over his face as his long fingers switched from chord to chord.

  
“ _It’s gonna take a lot to take me away from you_ ,” Richie started from the chorus, his voice soft and raspy, and Eddie was frozen, confused beyond belief, angry to his very core, and so very in love that it hurt to think about it.

  
“ _There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do_ ,” Eddie tried not to think about what this meant, tried not to get his hopes up, but then Richie was raising his head, looking at Eddie with shiny eyes and a soft smile, and Eddie couldn’t help but step closer.

  
“ _I bless the rains down in Africa_ ,” Richie was swaying a little now, shifting to the side to make space on the too-small bed. Eddie couldn’t do anything but walk closer, couldn’t help but sit down cross legged on the bed in front of Richie, and God, he was still angry, so angry, only, he needed to be closer. He needed to see Richie’s fingers, each one up close, holding down the particular strings in a particular order, needed to see his face, furrowed in confusion, but open and gentle, because Eddie loved Richie. God help him.

  
“ _Gonna take some time to do the things we never had_ ,” Richie crooned, his strumming slowing down. The silence returned slowly, only now it was unreadable.

  
“I wanted to find a way to tell you,” Richie said, his face downturned once more. “I wanted it to be special, and I fucked up so bad, I’m so sorry Eds.”

  
Eddie couldn’t breathe, and he was still angry, but now he was smiling too, gasping out, “Tell me what ‘Chee?”

  
Richie’s breathe hitched at the nickname, moisture spilling out over his bottom eyelids that he quickly moved to wipe away.

  
“I love you too, Eddie. Eddie, baby, you’re the one for me. Of course I love you, of course I do.” Richie looked up, their eyes meeting as Eddie felt the tension inside of his chest breaking.

  
“You do?” he squeaked before he could stop himself. Richie laughed, but instead of mirth, all Eddie found in the chuckle was bittersweet adoration.

  
“I learned how to play a song just so you would always remember how I professed my love to you,” Richie leaned over an inch, slightly into Eddie’s space, but cautious in his approach. “I wanted to make it special for you Eds,” Richie said, his voice thick. “I didn’t really think it through, but I love you, so much, and I’m sorry, so sorry Eds,” the tears were there again, but this time Eddie was the one to reach over and wipe them away. Slowly, carefully, he moved the guitar from Richie’s grasp with reverence, and at the same pace, he wrapped his arms around Richie, carefully folding the lanky boy into his chest. He wasn’t angry anymore, not really, though he knew he should have been.

  
“Why’re you cryin’ Rich?” Eddie mumbled, his voice soft and his arms comforting.

  
“Just thinkin’ about how I’m gonna have to break the news to your mom.” It wasn’t Richie’s best, but Eddie laughed anyway, the emptiness where the anger had left him filling up with soft adoration.

  
“You’re so stupid, ‘Chee.” It was that same soft tone, the one Richie was speaking in, it was melodic just as Richie’s voice or his busted up guitar was, and it filled up all the spaces between Eddie and Richie on the bed until they were connected by this, all pulled together as if with string.

  
“Yeah,” Richie agreed, and he was laughing now too as he pulled Eddie onto his lap, keeping Eddie’s arms around him as he shifted their embrace. Richie craned his neck and pressed a soft kiss to the top of Eddie’s head, before pulling him in tighter.

  
“I love you, you fuckface,” Eddie mumbled.

  
And yeah, Eddie was still a little pissed, and he knew he and Richie were going to have a long talk about communication in the morning. But in that moment, with Richie wrapped around him and with _Africa_ resting at the back of his head and up in a hum in his throat, Eddie knew that there was nothing a hundred men (or more) could ever do to take the moment (the beautiful, problematic boy who was stupid and so very bad at talking about his feelings but was so very lovely) away from him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Check me out on Tumblr @ should-i-gay-or-should-i-go, drop a prompt if you'd like.


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